Fasti of the Gonzagas
The Fasti of the Gonzagas (Fasti gonzagheschi) or Gonzaga Cycle is a 1578-1580 cycle of oil on canvas paintings commissioned from
History
The commission came in two halves, with four canvases ordered in 1578 for the Sala dei Marchesi, followed by another four for the Sala dei Duchi, and all eight completed by or in 1580..
The main source for the works is a set of letters between the major Mantuan court official count Teodoro Sangiorgio and the Gonzaga's ambassador to Venice Paolo Moro, in which Sangiorgio sent Moro Federico's detailed instructions on what the works to pass on to the artist himself. The letters also included depictions of the rooms in which the works were to hang and portraits of Federico and past Gonzaga marquesses and dukes for Tintoretto to copy into the works.[3]
The sum received for the commission was relatively small considering the large size of the canvases,
Sala dei Marchesi
Sigismund Makes Giovanni Francesco Gonzaga Marquess of Mantua
The first canvas celebrates
Ludovico II Gonzaga Defeats the Venetians at the Battle of Adige
Federico I Gonzaga Lifts the Swiss Siege of Legnano
Francesco II Gonzaga at the Battle of Taro
Sala dei Duchi
Federico II Gonzaga Conquers Parma
Federico II Gonzaga's Victorious Entry into Milan
Federico II Gonzaga Defends Padua
Philip II of Spain Enters Mantua
The work shows Philip, Infante of Spain (later to be Philip II) entering Mantua on 13 January 1549.[6] The city was one of the stops on his journey from Valladolid to meet his father Charles V in Brussels, where he was to receive an oath of loyalty from the Low Countries, which Charles intended via the Pragmatic Sanction of 1549 to unify into a single state that he could then annex to the Spanish crown. It brings the cycle full circle, showing - like the first work - a representative of the main European power of the time arriving in Mantua and honouring or promoting a member of the Gonzaga family.[6]
It is the only work in the cycle for which the commissioner's specifications do not survive, though one was probably provided - it is known Tintoretto was sent a print of the piazza Castello in Mantua, where
Of all the works in the cycle, Entry probably had the least autograph involvement of Tintoretto himself and is probably almost entirely by his son
Portraits
At the centre of the work Philip is shown wearing black and riding a white horse under a canopy held by pages in refined liveries, with Francesco III's uncles
Francesco III is shown on a white horse to the right, welcoming the princely procession, whilst to the left is the painting's commissioner on a brown horse with rich gold trappings, though he is shown as a young man rather than the eleven-year-old child he in fact was at the time of visit, perhaps showing that no portrait of him aged eleven was available to Tintoretto. A similar discrepancy can be seen in the portrait of Philip himself, more mature than the twenty-two-year-old he in fact was at the time of the visit and probably based on the official portraits of him disseminated by the Habsburg authorities after he took the Spanish throne in 1556.[6]
The portrait of Ferrante is based on that of him as one of the donors in
-
Fermo Ghisoni, Assumption with Donors, 1556, Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Curtatone -
Fermo Ghisoni, Ercole Gonzaga, 1555-1560, Ducal Palace, Mantua -
Anonymous, Francesco III Gonzaga, circa 1545, private collection -
Anonymous, Vespasiano Gonzaga, 1570-1575, Ambras Castle, Innsbruck
Sala dei Capitani
Once the paintings and decorative schemes of the Sala dei Marchesi and Sala dei Duchi were complete, the Duke proposed that Tintoretto add a third set of works covering the period between 1328 and 1433 when the Gonzagas were not marquesses but 'capitani del popolo' of Mantua. This would have hung in the Sala dei Capitani, the last room Guglielmo had added to the Palazzo Ducale.[13] He declined the commission and so this set of works was instead produced by Lorenzo Costa the Younger.[13]
All that survives of Costa's works are two preparatory drawings now in the
Notes
- ^ The canvases's measurements are - Giovanni Francesco Gonzaga made Marquess of Mantua: cm. 272.5 × 432; Ludovico II Gonzaga Defeats the Venetians at the Battle of Adigesconfigge i veneziani nella battaglia dell'Adige: cm. 273 × 385.5; Federico I Gonzaga libera Legnano: cm. 262 × 421.5; Francesco II Gonzaga at the Battle of Taro: cm. 269.5 × 422; Federico II Gonzaga Conquers Parma: cm. 212 × 283.5; Federico II Gonzaga's Victorious Entry into Milan: cm. 212 × 283.5; Federico II Gonzaga Defends Padua: cm. 210 × 276.5; Philip II of Spain Enters Mantua: cm. 211.7 × 330.
References
- ^ a b Cornelia Syre, "Tutto Spirito, Tutto Prontezza". Tintoretto's Gonzaga Cycle, in Cornelia Syre (ed.), Tintoretto. The Gonzaga Cycle, Munchen, 2000, pp. 13-27.
- ^ a b Tom Nichols, Tintoretto: tradition and identity, London, 1999, p. 133.
- ^ (in Italian) Alessandro Luzio, Fasti Gonzagheschi dipinti dal Tintoretto, in Archivio Storico dell'Arte, III, 1890, pp. 397-400.
- ^ (in Italian) Miguel Falomir, Tintoretto profano, in Giovanni Morello and Vittorio Sgarbi (ed.s), Tintoretto (exhibition catalogue; Roma, Scuderie del Quirinale, 24 February - 10 June 2012), Milano, 2012, pp. 132-133.
- ^ Veronika Poll-Frommel, Jan Schmidt, Cornelia Syre, The Gonzaga Cycle, in Cornelia Syre (ed.), Tintoretto. The Gonzaga Cycle, cit., pp. 29-30.
- ^ a b c d e Veronika Poll-Frommel, Jan Schmidt, Cornelia Syre, The Gonzaga Cycle, cit., pp. 108-115.
- ^ (in Italian) Daniela Sogliani, Guglielmo Gonzaga tra gusto dell'antico e modernità. Rapporti artistici, acquisti e mercato (1563-1587), in Andrea Emiliani and Raffaella Morselli (ed.s), Gonzaga. La Celeste galeria. L'esercizio del collezionismo, Milano, 2002, p. 338.
- ^ (in Spanish) José Luis Colomer, El negro y la imagen Real, in José Luis Colomer and Amalia Descalzo (ed.s), Vestir a la española en las cortes europeas (siglos XVI y XVII), Madrid, 2014, pp. 88-89.
- ^ (in Italian) Daniela Sogliani, L'Ingresso dell'Infante Filippo II di Spagna a Mantova nel 1549, in Andrea Emiliani and Raffaella Morselli (ed.s), La Celeste galeria. La raccolta, Milano, 2002, pp. 223-225.
- ^ Fances Huemer, Portraits Painted in Foreign Countries, in Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, XIX, Anversa, 1977, p. 23.
- ^ Bettina Marteen, Vespasiano Gonzaga – an Outsider in the Family Portrait, in Cornelia Syre (curatore), Tintoretto. The Gonzaga Cycle, cit. pp. 147-148.
- ^ (in Italian) Raffaele Tamalio, Ferrante Gonzaga alla corte spagnola di Carlo V nel carteggio privato con Mantova (1523-1526). La formazione da «Cortegiano» di un generale dell'impero, Mantova, 1991, pp. 283-284.
- ^ a b Barbara Furlotti and Guido Rebecchini, The Art of Mantua: Power and Patronage in the Renaissance, Los Angeles, 2008, p. 215.
- ^ a b (in Italian) Stefano L'Occaso, Su alcuni apparati pittorici del palazzo ducale di Mantova tra Sei e Settecento, in Atti della Accademia roveretana degli Agiati, 258, VII, VIII, A, fasc. II, 2008, p. 107.